


Whisper Terror into the Minds of Children Who Dream

by AntagonizedPenguin



Series: How Best to Use a Sword [21]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Baby, Birthdays, Blood, Family, Magic, Murder, Necromancy, Violence, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 16:11:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12708411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntagonizedPenguin/pseuds/AntagonizedPenguin
Summary: James and the baby are going to have the same birthday.





	Whisper Terror into the Minds of Children Who Dream

**Author's Note:**

> This is a side story for [It's Not as Easy as Wandering into a Forest and Killing the Witch](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4632171/chapters/10562496), featuring the backstory of James. 
> 
> Readers of the main story know how this ends. It's possible to read this without reading that story though, so for anyone doing that, mind the tags, it's not a happy story.

“She’s going to have the same birthday as you. That’s a powerful sign.” 

“What does that mean?”

“Being born on the same day as someone else means that you two will have a bond—souls aligned with one another.” 

“Oh.” 

“You’ll be able to do great things together, things that you might not have been able to do by yourself.”

“Even though she’s a baby?”

“She won’t always be a baby, James.” 

James nodded. Even if it was a powerful sign that meant they’d be able to go great things, he wasn’t entirely sure about sharing his birthday with his new cousin. So far all it meant was that _his_ birthday was taken up by everyone fussing over Aunt Delilah and helping Uncle Joey with things. And James was old enough to understand that a baby being born was a big deal that took a lot of attention and a lot of work from everyone and that it didn’t mean that anyone had forgotten about him, but the selfish part of him still would have liked more than a cursory congratulations while they all focused on something else. 

Even the plants were excited about the baby. Normally James liked to listen to them, it was nice and calming when everything else was too much. But the grass and the trees all around his grandparents’ house were singing songs of welcome for the baby. 

James’s grandfather put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay.”

“What’s okay?” 

“It’s okay to be a little bit jealous.” 

“I…I’m not,” James said, though he was just a little bit. 

“It’s okay.” James’s grandfather was tall and thick like a tree wore a hemp bracelet with a charm on it on his left wrist, and he got more lines on his face every time James saw him and walked with a cane, which James thought was neat. Even though the cane was from a tree that had been cut down years ago, James could sometimes hear it humming when his grandfather walked. “Come here.” It hummed now as James was led to away from the front yard of the house to the little shed in the back. 

The inside of the cramped shed was full of tools and gardening supplies, with a long table that James’s grandfather used taking up one full wall. It was one of James’s favourite places to visit just because it always seemed so calm. 

James mentally said hello to the little stool as he sat on it. Even though it had never sung to him, that didn’t mean it couldn’t hear him—it might just be quiet or shy, and he didn’t want to be rude just in case. 

“I made you something,” James’s grandfather said, reaching to the table. James lit up a little bit as he tried to see in the gloom of the shed, which was illuminated only be one window. Grandfather chuckled a little bit at the low light that shone from James’s skin with his excitement. “That’s a new one.”

“Sorry,” James said, looking at his hands. “When we were out hiking in the spring I met some plants that glowed at night. I asked them how they did it and then I started doing it by accident.” 

Another gentle laugh. “It’s a useful thing to be able to do. I could do to have you sit here while I work. I’d be able to see better. Here.” He picked up a long tree branch that had been polished and carved with a pattern of whorls and ridges that looked wholly natural. “Your grandmother always says a witch is nothing without a staff.” 

The branch was singing a beautiful song that reminded James of water and light. “You…you made this for me?” he said, transfixed by the sound and lost in the carvings.

“I did,” James’s grandfather said, urging James to take it. “Happy birthday, James.” 

“Thank you.” James took it in his hands, gasping at the way the branch reached out and seemed to hold him even as he held it. It was like clasping another person’s hand. The light faded from his skin and instead swam out from the staff now, illuminating the little shed brightly as the song rose in James’s head. “It’s wonderful, grandpa.”

“I guess you like it.”

“It’s perfect,” James said, tears rimming his eyes. “I love it. And I think it likes me too.” 

“It’s probably been waiting to meet you. I told it all about you while I was carving it.” James looked up at his grandfather in confusion, and he shrugged. “I may not be able to hear them like you can, but I figure that doesn’t mean they can’t hear me.” 

“Are…are you sure you’re not a witch, grandpa?”

“I think I’d have noticed by the time I got to be this age, don’t you? No, I’m just an ordinary man,” he said with a smile. 

“I don’t think that’s true,” James whispered, slipping down from the stool and giving his grandfather a hug. “Even if you aren’t a witch. I still think you’re very special.” 

“I’m glad you think so. I think you’re special too, James.” 

James didn’t feel that way most of the time. He should have—he was the only person in the family who could hear the songs that plants sang, but all that seemed to mean was that he ended up with more work to do than anyone else. A part of him regretted ever telling his parents that he could do that. He hadn’t known it was something that nobody else could do. 

James felt a sparkling in the back of his mind and he turned to see a faerie fly into the hut through the open window. “There you two are,” Thorn said, alighting onto James’s arm, pausing to look at the staff in something that seemed to be appreciation. 

“Hello, Thorn. I like your haircut.” She’d used to have long hair, but had cut almost all of it off since the last time James had seen her, and James thought it made her look lighter.

“Thanks, kid,” Thorn said, smiling up at him much wider than James thought the compliment warranted. “Do you like the stick? The old guy’s been working on it since last time you were here.” 

James hadn’t been to his grandparents’ house in nearly half a year. His parents had just been too busy to come visit. “I think it’s wonderful,” James told Thorn. “It sings the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard.” 

“Guess it likes you, then.” Thorn smiled again, patting James’s hand. “Listen, you two are supposed to come back to the house. The old lady says the baby’s about to come.” 

James felt himself go a little stiff at that, but grandpa just nodded. “Well, we’d best go, then. Wouldn’t want to be late for your new cousin, would we?” He smiled, patted James on the shoulder, and led him out of the hut. James followed, clutching his staff, and Thorn followed after them. 

“You wait out here for now,” grandpa said when they approached the main house, pointing him towards where the other kids were playing. “I’ll go in and see if they need anything.” James nodded, trying to seem mature and grown-up, and went over to sit in the grass with his cousins and his brother and sister. Thorn followed him to the door, though she buzzed around the side of the house after he went in. 

“Hey,” Jason said as James sat down with them. He smiled at James. “Nice stick.” 

James smiled back. “Thanks. Grandpa made it for me.” 

“Can I see?” Johnathon asked, except he wasn’t asking because his hand was already reaching out to grab the staff. 

“You can look,” James said, clutching it protectively to his chest. “With your eyes.” That was what mom was always saying to him when he wanted to take James’s things. Look with your eyes, not your hands. Then she would usually tell James to learn how to share better, but it was James’s birthday and he didn’t feel like sharing his staff. 

“Aw, come on, Tiny.” Johnathon’s hand wrapped around the staff, and the song it was singing suddenly became angry. “I’m not going to do anything to it.”

“Let go!” James said, pulling back. He didn’t like how angry the wood sounded—it was going to have to get used to James’s brother, probably—but if he said that, Johnathon would make fun of him. 

“Fine, God.” Johnathon let go suddenly, and James fell back into the grass, wincing as he hit his head on the ground. When James glared up at Johnathon, he was looking down at his hand, which he wiped off on his thigh. He smiled down at James. “Sorry, James. So it’s a wand, right? You can do magic with it?” 

“I haven’t…tried,” James said, sitting again. He knew Johnathon had just been playing around. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so much of a baby. 

“You should try!” Kayla said, hopping to her feet to come sit beside James. “You’re the best at magic anyway, James. You’ll be even more the best at it now that you have a wand like mom and dad and John.” 

“I’m not the best,” James protested in a mumble. 

“I want to see what you can do with it, too,” Jason said, and Titania nodded encouragingly beside him. 

Without allies, James nodded slowly. “Okay, I’ll try and…” He looked down at the grass, feeling beneath the surface, listening to the tone of the song it was singing. Some flowers, he thought. There were old, unpollinated flower seeds buried all over the yard. Even with his bare hands he could make a few of them sprout if he tried. He felt his connection with the earth and used it to ask for a favour, but instead of touching with his hands he let the staff mediate the connection, and tapped it to the ground when he was ready. 

Flowers broke through the ground all around them, blooming for several feet in every direction. All colours and breeds, years and years of seeds that had failed to germinate, bursting to life all at once, singing a hundred songs of welcome. James flinched back from the sudden onslaught. 

Kayla practically squealed with laughter, and his cousins looked impressed. Johnathon made a little ‘tch’ noise, but he was smiling too, proudly, James thought. “Show-off.”

“It was an accident,” James muttered, embarrassed. He hadn’t meant to make flowers _everywhere_. 

“It’s okay.” Johnathon ruffled his hair. “My little brother. You’re pretty awesome sometimes, you know.” 

“Th-thanks.” James knew he shouldn’t be so surprised—Johnathon spent actually a lot of his time teaching James the magic that he couldn’t figure out on his own, when mom and dad were busy or when they couldn’t explain something in a way James could understand. He’d probably learned more about his power from his brother than from anyone else. He liked to pick on James sometimes, but he really was nice, and a good teacher. 

“I’m taking all the credit when you’re the best witch in the world, though. Going to tell everyone it was all my doing.”

“Okay.” James giggled a little. “Only if I can blame all my mistakes on you too, though.”

“Nah, those are all mom and dad.” Johnathon paused, pulled something out of his pocket. “Here. Happy Birthday.” 

It was a little book, and James took it, looked through it curiously. The pages were filled with descriptions of spells, recipes for potions and mixtures, lists of plants with their properties listed out. James’s parents had a dozen books like this one, but these…it was spells for convincing door hinges not to squeak, for making a bubble of quiet around himself so nobody could hear what he was saying, five-minute invisibility, potions to disguise when he was lying, a herb mixture he could put on food to mask its taste. A few things that seemed like they might have to do with sex, which James was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to know about. He looked up at Johnathon, confused. “Magic mom and dad aren’t going to teach you,” he said, flashing a grin. “And that they’d flay me for telling you—or for knowing at all.”

“But…won’t I get in trouble?”

“Only if they find out you have it, James,” Johnathon said, ruffling his hair again. “You’re not a baby anymore. Big kids are supposed to have things their parents don’t know about. I promise there’s nothing in there that can hurt you.” 

“Okay.” James considered the book for a moment before slipping it into his pocket with a conspiratorial smile shared with his brother. He’d look at it later when nobody was around. “Thanks, Johnathon.” He wasn’t totally sure he wanted spells to help him touch himself, but it was kind of neat, having something naughty like that. It made him feel older. He was grateful, though, that Kayla had wandered off a bit to pick the flowers and didn’t seem to have overheard. And Jason and Titania were both smiling, so they probably weren’t going to tell anyone. 

“We made you something too,” Titania told him, and she produced a woven bracelet with some charms on it, which she fastened to James’s wrist. 

“It’s really nice,” James said, looking at it. It buzzed like magic, too. 

“They’re protection charms for you,” Jason told him. “Tana made them, obviously. But the weave itself is protective as well. You could probably get hit by a centaur with that on and be okay.”

James giggled. “I don’t think I’ll test that. But thank you.” 

“I got you a present too!” Kayla had noticed what they were doing and came rushing back over, arms full of flowers that she was dropping everywhere. “Hold on.” She sat down, letting the flowers pile in her lap, and dug through a pocket in her dress before finally pulling out what looked like a hair pin, which she pinned to James’s shirt, only stabbing him twice. “Daddy helped me make it,” she told James proudly. “But I did all the work.” 

James looked down at. It was a wood carving in the shape of a tree. The wood was humming just a little, a song of effort and love. “Thank you, Kayla,” James said, fingering it and smiling. “I love it.” 

“I’m going to make you a flower necklace too!” Kayla declared, rooting around the pile in her lap. 

“Why don’t we help you with that?” Jason asked, and when she nodded he leaned over and took some of the flowers for himself. 

The five of them spent a good while making flower necklaces for each other—between them, they managed to convince Kayla that it was okay to make some for everyone else too, though James still ended up wearing three. 

James was humming along with the flowers in his hands as he worked on making another one out of blue flowers for Jason when he felt something strange. A little pulse, through the earth right into him. He looked around for the source, with his eyes and his magic. 

“What’s wrong?” Johnathon asked him, noticing James’s distraction. 

“Did you feel that?” 

“I didn’t feel anything.” A series of head shakes confirmed that James was the only one who had felt anything, and he frowned around, wondering what it had been. It hadn’t been his imagination—the flowers had all gotten louder at the pulse. 

“James.” That was his father’s voice, and James turned to see him standing in the doorway of the house, beckoning him over. “Come here.”

 _Oh._ He stood, trying to smile. “I’ll be back in a bit,” he promised the rest of them, and went over to join his father. He left his staff behind. 

“Come inside,” dad said, and James nodded. 

“The baby’s here, right?” James asked, because what else could it be? 

“Yes, she is.”

“I felt it,” James told him. It seemed like they weren’t wrong that the two of them were going to be connected. “In the earth.” 

Dad looked surprised for a moment, then he smiled down at James proudly. “Of course you did. We want you to come meet her.” 

“Okay.” It was just a baby, James told himself. There was no reason to be nervous. So he tried to pretend he wasn’t as he walked into the house and let dad lead him to the back room, where all the adults were crowded. 

Aunt Delilah was in the big bed, looking pale and exhausted, with Uncle Joey sitting beside her, beaming, his curly hair looking more frazzled than usual. 

Uncle Timothy was standing by the door with grandpa, and James expected both of them had probably been waiting outside with dad. Aunt Julia was tidying up something messy in the corner of the room, and grandma was sitting in a chair, looking pleased. Tall and wide-shouldered, mom was at the foot of the bed, and she smiled at James and gestured for him to come closer, and dad gave James a little push. 

The baby was in Aunt Delilah’s arms, swaddled in blankets. James’s eyes fell on her and he could hear plants singing distantly. 

“Would you like to meet your new cousin, James?” 

James nodded, approaching the bed in a bit of a haze. She was…small. He’d known babies were small, but he hadn’t realized how small. It made him a little worried—it would be too easy for something to hurt her. 

She looked even smaller up close, as James stood close to the side of the bed and looked down at her. She was swaddled in so many blankets that he was a little surprised she didn’t get lost. Aunt Delilah and Uncle Joey were beaming down at her, and James couldn’t help but smile too. “What’s her name?” he asked in something just above a whisper.

“We haven’t decided yet.” Aunt Delilah sounded very, very tired. James guessed that it must be a lot of work to have a baby. He knew how having babies worked, and it also must really hurt a lot. “Where I’m from it’s bad luck to name babies before they’re a week old.”

“So you’ll name her in a week?”

“Yes.” Aunt Delilah nodded. She was from the clan of mountain witches in the west, James remembered. “Would you like to hold her for a minute?”

That made James a little nervous. “Are you sure?” he asked. “What if I wake her up?” 

Or drop her, or squeeze too tightly and hurt her, or…

“You won’t—it takes a lot to wake up a baby, trust me.” Aunt Delilah smiled at him, as if knowing what he was really thinking. “It’s okay. You won’t hurt her.”

“Are you sure?” James asked again.

“Here.” She held the baby up in her arms, and James leaned down despite himself to take her in his own. He looked at how Aunt Delilah was holding her arms so that the baby rested in them, how she had the baby’s head in the crook of her elbow, and he tried to do the same. 

He was already shaking a little before Aunt Delilah had even taken her hands away, but he straightened took the baby from her properly, looking down at her. 

Aunt Delilah’s hands fell away from James’s arms, and he stood straight. 

The pulse of magic he’d felt earlier was nothing compared to what happened then, a surge of light and music and _power_ , cascading from…him. From them. Out into the floor, the air around them. For a moment the entire room was glowing, and all the wood in the walls and floor and furniture came to life, sprouting branches and leaves and flowers that sang songs of triumph. There was an orchestra in James’s head, singing the loudest song he’d ever heard, one that made him cry with how deep and important it was. It was a song about the world, about the entire world, and everything in it. 

And for just a moment James could feel that, the entire world, in his head and in his bones and cradled here in his arms. He looked down at his cousin, blinking through the tears in his eyes. She was moving a little, waking up even though babies were hard to wake up, and James knew she could feel it too. Her eyes opened for a moment and James looked down into them. “Hi,” he said to her. “I’m James. I think we’re going to change the world, is that okay?”

\---

“Everyone should go get some sleep,” grandma declared. “It’s been a very long day.”

They’d all had a nice birthday dinner. Grandma had moved Aunt Delilah’s bed outside so that her and the baby could come, and they’d had grilled fish, which was James’s favourite. They’d all taken turns holding the baby and congratulating her, and James and Aunt Delilah. James really felt like Aunt Delilah was the one who mostly should be getting congratulations. She was the one who’d had a baby today. He felt silly for being jealous earlier in the day. He’d had a whole bunch of birthdays and he wasn’t a baby anymore, he would survive having one birthday given over to the baby. 

And he was happy to share the rest of them from now on, too. He could tell that he and the baby were going to be best friends once she wasn’t a baby anymore, and if the way that the wood and the plants had reacted to their being together was any indication, they were going to be just as powerful together as grandpa had said. 

Maybe even more. In the instant that he’d held her, James had felt connected to the whole earth, and had felt like it was the whole earth that he was holding in his arms, not just a baby. Aunt Delilah had joked that it looked like James was going to be spending a lot of time at their house, so they’d have to teach him how to change diapers.

James couldn’t wait.

Aunt Julia and Uncle Timothy had gotten him a nice notebook to write in, and told him that it was important for a witch to keep good notes when he was working on spells and potions. His dad had given him a nice black coat and his mom a satchel full of herbs, and they’d promised him another gift when they got back home in a day or two. They were very grown-up presents, and James really liked them a lot.

“I’m not tired, though!” Kayla announced, even though a minute ago she’d been resting her head on Johnathon’s shoulder because she was tired. She was still a little girl, even if she was only three years younger than James. Three years was a long time.

“Well, I am,” grandma told her, smiling. “And it’s going to be a busy day tomorrow as well, so let’s all get some rest.” Grandma always talked in a way that made it clear that everyone was going to do as she said, even if she wasn’t telling them to do anything. James wondered if that was because she was important or if it was just because she was old. 

“Okay…” Kayla pouted, then yawned.

That made James yawn too, though he was still feeling very energetic and buzzy from earlier. Everyone was standing up and saying goodnight, and they all came over and said happy birthday to James one more time, which was nice. When most of them were done and people were moving off, James headed over to the bed just before it was moved into the house, and he gave Aunt Delilah a hug. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, James.” She smiled at him, and held out the baby.

James leaned down and kissed her on the head. “Goodnight. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He knew it was just his imagination, the surge of joy he felt emanating from somewhere at that. 

He waved at Aunt Delilah as Uncle Joey and Aunt Julia, wand out, lifted her bed and put it back in the house. When they were gone, grandma cocked a finger to James and had him come over. 

“What is it?” he asked, when they were alone. Sort of. Mom and dad were still there with Johnathon and Kayla, waiting for James. 

“I’ve got your birthday gift for you,” she told him, smiling. 

“Oh.” James smiled. “You didn’t have to get me anything, it’s okay!”

“Yes, I know. You’ve been very mature all day, I’m very impressed, James. It’s hard, sharing the one day on the calendar that’s meant to be yours, yes?”

James shuffled his feet a little on the grass. “A little,” he admitted, because lying to grandma was a bad idea. “But it’s okay. It’s not the baby’s fault she was born on the same day as me.” 

She laughed, and nodded. “Maybe not. Anyway, of course I got you something. It is your birthday, after all. Give me your hand.”

“Okay…” James did as he was told, switching his new staff into his left hand to give grandma his right. 

“That staff really suits you,” grandma said as she took James’s hand, running a finger along his palm.

“Thank you. It’s…I really like it.”

“Your grandfather worked very hard on it. He’ll be happy to know how much it means to you.” 

James nodded. “It does…ouch.” Her fingernail had punctured James’s skin, drawing blood. 

“Here.” She tilted James’s hand, let a drop of blood roll down his palm, and land on the grass. The music filled James’s head, not just of the grass, but of the whole forest. He gasped, and suddenly felt like he was standing on the back of something giant, something old, something powerful. “Do you feel it?”

James nodded. “What is it?”

“That’s the forest.”

“It’s…” James couldn’t describe what it was. It was beautiful. It was huge. It was… “It’s alive.”

“Yes, it is.” Grandma nodded. “That’s my gift to you. Unfortunately, you’re old enough now that you don’t usually get toys as presents. Instead you get taught something. Whenever you use your magic, this is where it’s coming from. You should do your very best to become friends with it.” 

James frowned a little, still overwhelmed by the feeling of the forest. “Does it want to be friends with me?” The forest felt so alien that he doubted it understood the idea. 

“That’s for you to find out. Usually I wouldn’t have taught you this until you were much older. But you’re powerful enough to handle it now. Always remember, James, that you exist in balance with the forest. If it likes you and you keep it happy, it will be your most powerful ally. If you can’t, your life will be very hard.”

James nodded, feeling a weight settling onto his shoulders. He’d never realized. He’d never realized how big the world was. How much more there was to it. How real everything was. “I’ll be good to it.”

“Then it will be good to you.” Grandma smiled. “I also baked you a box of your favourite cookies to take home tomorrow. But I’ll give them to you in the morning.”

James couldn’t help it, he chuckled a little, face splitting into a grin. “Thank you.”

Grandma nodded. “Come, let’s return you. I need to speak with your mother for a moment.” 

They rejoined James’s family. The feeling of enormity behind the forest didn’t leave, and James didn’t think it ever would. But it receded, moved to the back of his mind, so that he wasn’t buried in it. “What did you talk about?” Kayla asked, perking up a little.

“The forest,” James told her, looking down at his hand. The cut had healed, and it was tingling. He was pretty sure his grandmother hadn’t done that. 

“Jocelyn,” grandma said quietly. “A moment.”

“Not longer,” mom said, glancing at dad. “The kids are tired.”

James wasn’t tired.

Grandma nodded. “We’ll talk more fully tomorrow, but I want to know now. What has the Grand Coven decided about the Solomon issue?”

Oh. James should have known that grandma wanted to talk about the Grand Coven. Ever since mom had started sitting on it a few years ago in grandma’s place, it had been taking up a lot of mom’s time. James always heard her talking to dad about how they wanted her to do this, or wanted to talk about that. And sometimes mom had to go away for a long time to have meetings with them. James admitted that he didn’t really know what the Grand Coven did, except that they seemed to do a lot of it. It seemed important to him. 

“Nothing,” mom said, voice lowered, but not low enough that James couldn’t hear her. She had a kind of deep voice, and it tended to carry. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to chase him across half the world when we aren’t sure we’ve found him.”

“Fifteen years he’s been missing, with that stone” grandma said, in that voice that suggested she was about to tell someone what to do. She often got like that when she and mom talked about the magical stone, the one that was always humming, that mom kept in a locked box in her bedroom. “This is the first time he’s potentially surfaced. We’ve already agreed to put a stop to him when we can.”

“I don’t know if we can, that’s the issue,” mom whispered. “Is it reasonable to assume we have that power? We don’t know how strong he is and I don’t want the Coven wiped out because we rushed in half-cocked.”

“So it’s you who’s been stalling the decision, then?” 

Mom nodded. “Let’s talk about this tomorrow, mother? Perhaps not in front of the children?”

“The children are old enough to know that the world isn’t always safe.”

“Yet I’d rather spare them the details of that as long as I can. Surely you understand.”

They looked at each other for a long moment, then grandma nodded. “We shall talk about this tomorrow. Goodnight.” She turned to the rest of them. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, grandma.” James said, as if he hadn’t just heard her arguing with mom. Again. 

It was a short walk from grandma’s house to the little spot in the woods where they were camping. They all lived too far away to just come visit easily, so when it was important for the whole clan to get together, they all camped in little tents that were separated just enough that the families had privacy. 

“I don’t know why she stepped off the Coven if she still wanted to micromanage it,” dad grumbled as they walked.

Mom shook her head. “She’s unburdened from the actual work, and just gets to do the part where she makes everyone do as she wants. Truth be told, she probably did it to get away from Cameron. The woman is a force of nature and I don’t mean that in a good way.” 

“The two of them together must have been terrifying for everyone else.”

“I expect so.” Mom sighed. “It’s fine. If everything goes well, we won’t have to worry about it anymore anyway.” 

Dad nodded. James didn’t know what they were talking about, but he didn’t want to ask because he knew he wasn’t supposed to be eavesdropping. Johnathon was walking with his eyes closed, not listening to any of them, and Kayla was half asleep. Mom and dad usually waited until the three of them were all in bed before talking about stuff like this, they must have thought that the kids were all so tired that it didn’t matter. 

They got back to the little clearing where the three tents were set up. Mom went about getting Kayla into the little one, and Johnathon climbed into the middle one that he and James shared with a wave at all of them for goodnight. “James,” dad said, before he could follow. “Come help me with this for a second.”

James nodded, trotted over and helped his dad prepare warding spells for the night, to keep animals away and stuff. Part of him was pretty sure that the forest liked them enough to keep animals away anyway, but it made mom and dad feel better to have the wards up. These were all spells he knew how to do, and dad let him cast several of them himself, even though James did them a lot slower. James didn’t do them the same way dad did, he did them more like mom and the other witches who were born into this clan. Dad was from a different clan in the south, and they did magic differently. 

It was kind of cool, and James did know how to do all his spells his dad’s way too. Someday he wanted to go to all the different places where there were witches, to learn what they did differently. There were witches who talked to animals and could shapeshift, witches who used the stars to tell the future, witches who could walk on the ocean and make friends with mermaids. Animals ignored James, the sky always just seemed cold to him, and he’d never seen water bigger than the river near their house. He wanted to know all about those things. 

“I’m really proud of you, James,” dad said while they put up the wards. James looked over at him. “You’re growing up into a fine young man, and a fine witch.”

“Thank you,” James said, smiling and ducking his head a little. People often said he looked like his dad, with his darker complexion and round eyes. It made him feel better about being better at mom’s magic. “Do you really think I’ll be good at it someday?”

“I think you’re good at it now, son, and I think you and that baby are going to be a force to be reckoned with when you get older.” 

James nodded. He thought that too. 

Dad patted him on the back. “That’s good for the wards. Thanks for the help.”

“Sure.”

“Get to bed now, okay? You must be tired.”

James shook his head. “It’s kind of early.” It was dark, but it was a good hour before James would normally go to bed at home anyway, and that wasn’t counting the extra hour that he’d stay up reading afterwards. He was surprised Johnathon had gone to bed so readily, usually they stayed up together. 

“I know, but we’ve to get up real early tomorrow.”

“Why?” James hadn’t heard anything about this.

“It’s a surprise. You’ll see.” Dad smiled at him, patted James on the shoulder. “Off to bed.”

“Okay, dad.” James did as he was told, heading off for his tent. Mom had come out of Kayla’s and when James cast one last look over his shoulder before going into his tent, mom and dad were talking quietly in front of the third tent. He had the weirdest feeling that he was missing something. 

James shook his head and went into his tent, which he had to share with Johnathon since they were both boys and Kayla was the only girl. His brother was in there with his shirt off, laying back, looking up at the top of the tent. He smiled at James. “You’re not going to go to sleep, are you?”

James shook his head. “I’m not tired.” He took his boots off, and this his shirt too, though mostly because Johnathon had and he’d look like a wimp if he didn’t. 

Johnathon nodded, and he went back to looking up. James sighed and, after a moment’s indecision, pulled out the little book his brother had given him and opened it to the first page. 

“Getting in some practice?” Johnathon asked, smirking a bit when James nodded. “Let me know if you have any questions.”

“Why would I need to cast a wilting spell on myself?” Johnathon had invited them, so James asked one that he already had.

Another smirk. “You can’t think of a single reason why you might need to do that? Maybe like this morning, when it might have been helpful.”

Oh. James blushed, looked away. And started to glow a bit, just enough that it gave him light to read by. “Okay.”

Johnathon snickered. “You’re not a baby anymore, little brother. Nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“Not embarrassed,” James muttered, though he was, a little bit. Just because it was normal didn’t mean it wasn’t weird. 

“Okay. Happy Birthday, James.”

James smiled at his brother, and he kept reading. 

\---

A cry of power woke James up like an electric shock. It was still dark in the tent, and Johnathon was gone. 

Sitting up, James looked around, squinting his eyes to try and make himself glow. As he expected, he didn’t see anything but blankets and their stuff scattered around the small tent. 

Another pulse went through the earth and into James, and it made him really worried. He quickly found his shirt and put it on, crawling out of the tent without worrying about his boots. He grabbed his staff as he went, realizing as he did that it was singing again. 

It was still warm enough outside, and when James looked up at the moon, he judged it to be a little before midnight. He hadn’t been asleep for more than an hour, then. “Johnathon?” he called out, quietly, looking around the little campsite. 

A quiet wind blew, ruffling the tents. Mom and dad’s tent wasn’t tied shut, and a shiver ran through James. He looked inside, found them both missing. “Mom, dad?”

Kayla was in her tent, at least. James left her there for now, more worried about the people he couldn’t find. 

Another pulse, and this time James felt which direction it had come from. He followed it north, into the woods. There was a bit of a path cut through the underbrush, James noticed as he moved. As if someone had passed this way. 

Maybe there was some ritual or something that mom and dad and Johnathon were doing without him. That irked James—he was old enough to help with whatever they were doing. But even if he wasn’t, he didn’t understand why they hadn’t at least told him. 

It wasn’t an important ritual day, though, or even a full or new moon. James couldn’t think of what they’d be doing. 

Another pulse got James moving faster, wincing as he stepped on a broken branch and cut the bottom of his foot. He should have put his boots on. 

A few more steps, and James heard a baby crying. 

Pain in his foot immediately forgotten, James hurried his pace. If everyone had come out to do some ritual with the baby, he should be there. He should know what it was. 

His heart was suddenly racing and he wasn’t sure why. 

The crying went on, and on and on, and got louder as James drew closer. He hadn’t realized that babies could cry that loudly. The forest, present in the back of his mind, seemed to shift suddenly. The staff was holding his hand again. James stopped glowing, but he didn’t even notice. There was a light up ahead. 

James broke into a small clearing, where mom, dad and Johnathon were standing. Johnathon had his arms crossed, short wand stuck carelessly in his pocket, just at the far edge. He looked surprised to see James. Dad was standing in the middle, watching mom, crouched, finishing something on the ground. 

The baby was laying in between them, screaming.

“What are you doing here?” Johnathon asked, in that way he did when James had interrupted him doing something. 

“I…”

“You said he was asleep, son,” mom said, not looking up from the ground. She sounded annoyed.

“He was.”

“She’s crying,” James said, eyes on the baby. Why was she just laying there in the grass? In that circle. Mom was drawing a circle around her, carving it into the ground with a knife. 

“She’s okay, don’t worry,” Dad said, turning to James. He smiled. He had his wand too, in his hand. And mom’s, a staff taller than James’s, was beside her. “Babies cry all the time, it doesn’t mean anything.” 

“What are you doing?” James asked, looking around. “Where are Aunt Delilah and Uncle Joey?” She was their baby, they should be here if everyone was doing magic to her. 

“They’re resting,” dad told him, approaching James and putting a hand on his shoulder. “Having a baby is really tiring, and it’s important that they get some sleep.”

When his hand touched James, something like a shock ran through him, up from the ground, and James jumped as dad pulled his hand away. He was aware of the forest in his mind. He felt something like anger. “What are you doing to her?” James asked again. 

“A spell,” mom said, tucking the knife into her belt. “To help both of you. Would you like to help?”

“What kind of spell?” James asked, moving closer to the baby. She was still crying. He wanted to pick her up. 

“One that will make both of you much more powerful,” mom said, reaching into her pocket. She pulled out the humming stone, the one that she usually kept locked up. James hadn’t realized she’d had it with her. “Do you know what this is?”

James shook his head. 

“It’s a very powerful tool that will make this baby the strongest witch in the world. And you as well, since the two of you are connected. Once we bind it to her, your powers should increase too.”

The presence of the forest in James’s mind was reacting to the stone, murmuring, boiling. He look at it, listened to its song. “It sounds dangerous,” James said. “Shouldn’t you wait until she’s older?”

“No, it’s much harder to bind the stone to someone grown, or we’d just bind it to you.” Mom smiled at him, reached out and took James’s hand. Johnathon shifted behind her. “Binding it to the baby is the safest thing to do.”

Another spark of power came through James’s feet, shocking mom just like it had dad. But she just smiled wider and didn’t let go. “Come on, I’ve already drawn the spell circle.” She set the stone on the baby’s chest. 

“Can I at least calm her down first?” James asked. He couldn’t handle her crying anymore.

“There’s no time. You can hold her after we’re done the spell.” 

“But…” James looked down at the baby, wriggling and screaming in the spell circle. Mom put her hand on the circle, feeding power into it. James looked closer at the baby. “There’s blood,” he said quietly. 

Just a few drops of it, right there on the front of her blanket. “Why is there blood there?”

For just a minute a throbbing silence swept through the clearing, broken only by the baby crying. James looked up at mom.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, looking down at the spell circle. “Don’t worry about it.” 

“But…”

“James, just do as you’re told.” Mom’s voice turned into the ‘you’re about to be in trouble’ voice, and James snapped his mouth shut. “If you can’t do that, then I’ll have Johnathon take you back to bed.”

“I…” James didn’t know what to do. Something about all of this was wrong, it felt wrong. He didn’t like it. He wasn’t going to leave without the baby. The spell circle was starting to hum with a cloying song, drawing lines of power between the baby and the stone. 

Those pulses of power that had woken James up seemed to be coming nonstop now, surging into him. From the baby. From the earth. From the forest. He reached out, not sure if he was going to grab the baby, the stone or both. 

There was a crashing sound, and James’s grandpa broke into the clearing, heaving. “Grandpa!” He was bleeding from a cut to his forehead. “Are you okay?”

Grandpa glared around the clearing for a moment, eyes coming to land on dad. “You.” He was brandishing his cane in one hand like a weapon. He sounded angry, and scared and his voice broke. 

James stood up, looking between them. “Why are you mad?”

“You told me you dealt with him,” mom said, still watching the baby. She also sounded angry.

“I did,” dad snapped, stepping in front of James, wand out. “I didn’t think he’d get up from that hit.”

“Stop assuming things and try doing something _right_ , Kyle.” 

“What have the two of you done?” grandpa demanded, stepping forward. “Your brother. And Delilah. Both of them. And you…”

“Oh, shut up,” mom growled, not looking up at him. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“I understand that you’ve gone crazy, daughter.”

“Kyle.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dad raised his wand.

“Dad, don’t!” James got up, seeing what was about to happen, and grabbed dad’s arm, trying to get him to point his wand somewhere else.

“Let go of me, James,” dad said, voice sounding more dangerous than James had ever heard it before. He summoned his power and it…it was a power that James didn’t recognize, one totally opposite to his own, that made James taste something bitter when he got near it.

Arms came around him from behind, pulling James back. “Let go!” 

“Just hold still and be quiet,” Johnathon told him, holding James in place. “You can’t do anything.”

“Why are you doing this?” James cried, tears slipping down his face as dad pointed his wand at grandpa again. 

“You’ll understand when you’re older.”

James could feel but not see or hear the power working through dad’s wand, a power that wasn’t like any witchcraft that he knew of. It was directed right at grandpa, who just stood there. “Run, grandpa!” He wasn’t magical. If dad attacked him with magic, grandpa would die. 

Grandpa didn’t run, and dad’s attack came. And nothing happened, except that grandpa’s cane started singing. “You didn’t think Josephine was letting me run around the forest without any protection, did you?” he snarled, taking a step forward, then another, closing the distance between himself and dad, and hitting dad with his cane really hard in the face. James cried a little and looked away, and dad fell down. Johnathon took a step back, away from grandpa, and forced James to step back with him. 

“Let him go, John,” grandpa ordered.

“No.” James could feel his brother’s legs shaking. The baby was still screaming, but it was almost drowned out by the music of mom’s spell.

“Johnathon, don’t you…ah!” A rock hit grandpa in the head, and James looked down to see dad, wand out, glaring up at him. 

“Don’t have to hit you with magic,” dad growled from the ground. “Just have to hit you.”

“You little…”

“Grandpa!” Another rock was flying at him from the darkness. James struggled to break free from Johnathon, couldn’t. But he could run his power into his staff, make the rock fly somewhere else. 

“Johnathon, keep your brother under control!” 

“I’m trying, dad!” Johnathon grabbed James’s staff in both hands, tried to wrench it from his hands from behind. 

“No!” Another surge of power came to him from the earth, and James fed it into his wand, using it to push Johnathon back. Johnathon let go, fell back several paces, fell over. James ran to his grandfather just as grandpa hit dad in the face with his cane again, making him fall over. 

“Jocelyn, that’s enough now,” grandpa said, turning to her, hand on James’s shoulder. “Stop this.”

Mom looked at dad, at Johnathon. She sighed, shaking her head. “Useless.” 

“Mom, please…”

Mom reached down to her belt, took out her knife. Glanced at James and did something that had him doubled over, then tossed the knife easily, as if it were something she did all the time. 

There was a horrifying squish, and when James straightened, holding his belly, mom’s knife was sticking out of grandpa’s chest. “No!” Grandpa fell and James tried to keep him up, but they both just ended up falling. “You’re going to be…I can help you, I can…” Tears streamed down James’s face as he tried to remember the healing spell that he knew how to do, to heal small cuts. If he did it but stronger, it should work the same way. He ran as much power as he could through his staff, letting the wrath of the earth course through him and into his grandfather, who was shaking, looking up at the night sky. 

“James…run…your grandmother…” Grandpa’s voice was shaky, and a trickle of blood ran down from his mouth. 

“Please don’t die…” James pleaded. 

But grandpa didn’t hear him. He went limp in James’s arms, eyes glazing over. James felt it, felt the moment that the life left him. It felt like something being ripped from the world, and James screamed with it, loud enough to block out all the pain in his head for a minute, but not the pain in the rest of him, that filled him, made him scream all the louder, until he had no breath left to scream. 

Where his breath had used to be came power, a raw rage that flooded into him from the ground under his feet, and James turned his head to face his mother. “You killed him,” he whispered, throat scratching. “He’s dead. You killed him.”

“I have more important things to worry about than that,” mom said, voice a little tight. 

“You…”

“The baby’s going to die.”

That brought James short, and he moved his attention to her. “What?”

“The spell, it’s gone unstable.” Mom cast one glance at Johnathon, one at dad. “Should have waited for Tim. Get over here, James.”

“No…”

Mom looked up from the screaming baby, locking eyes with him. James didn’t recognize her. “The spell’s unstable and I need help to right it. If you don’t come over here right now, the stone’s magic will overpower hers, and she’ll die.” 

James’s eyes went wide, and he scrambled to his feet, or tried too, and ended up crawling over there, staff still in hand. He sat opposite the baby, looking down at her, looking down at her instead of up at mom. He was helping her, helping the baby. Not helping mom. “What do I do? How do I help her?”

“Feel the power that’s in the circle. Do you feel it?” When James nodded, mom fed a little bit of power into it. The power was spinning, an orchestral circumnavigation centered around the stone and the baby. Mom’s power added to it, trying to weigh it down, trying to make it spin in a balanced way instead of the wobbling it was doing now. “Carefully. Don’t make it worse.”

James nodded, swallowing bile and fear and hatred, and slowly fed power into the circle, trying to do what mom was doing, trying to balance the spell out. “What’s making it wobble?” he asked, voice barely audible. Mom was the best witch he knew. She wouldn’t have made the spell unstable, which meant something had interfered. 

“I don’t know,” mom admitted. “the stone is less stable than I realized.” 

The baby was still screaming, adding her voice to the cacophony of the spell, and… “It’s her,” James said, hands shaking with the effort of controlling his magic this way. The power, the rage that had filled him before, he wanted to let it all out, to use it at once. But that would be dangerous. “It’s her, she’s the one unbalancing it.” Now that he could hear it, he knew he was right. The baby was adding her own voice to the symphony, throwing it all off.

“That’s impossible. She’s ten hours old. She hasn’t got any power to speak of.”

“I can hear it,” James insisted. Mom never listened to him when he tried to tell her things. “She’s trying to stop you.”

“She’s resisting the spell. Fuck,” mom whispered. “It’s fine. We’ll just have to overpower her and… _fuck_.”

James wasn’t allowed to swear but his eyes went wide as he heard what mom did, a new note in the song. It couldn’t, the song, the spell, couldn’t survive that one. That one hadn’t come from the baby. It had come _through_ her. “We can’t…”

“We’re going to lose her.” Mom just sounded resigned. 

“No.” James looked down at the spell, listened to it, listened to the flow of power from the stone to the baby and back. And, taking his hand off the spell circle, he reached down and scooped the screaming baby into his arms, holding her like he’d been shown in the crook of his arm, taking the stone off her chest. 

He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. He knew what to do. James redirected that power, the tendrils from the baby to the stone and back, and attached them to himself instead. Gently, like pruning a plant, so he didn’t hurt her. Grafting them onto him—he and the baby had aligned souls, so he didn’t think the stone would know the difference. The world got louder and louder as he did, but the baby started to calm down.

She stopped crying when James replaced her in the circuit, the stone adhering to him instead. 

She stopped crying, but James could hear everything in the world. 

He probably screamed, probably replaced the noise the baby had been making, but James didn’t know. He could hear everything and nothing, and he was everything and nothing, his head aflame with music and sheet lightning, body convulsed by paroxysms of power that flooded into him, out of him, through him, were him, and he was everywhere, knowing everything, everything except one thing, and he was life itself, and life itself was strangling him, suffocating him. James was everything in the world and all alone, he was torn into a trillion pieces and all of them whole, he was everywhere and he didn’t know where he was. He was drowning in air and he wanted, so badly wanted, to swim, but the light was too loud and he…

Stability, a hand on the back of his mind, not a hand, but something, a power, ambivalent, but benevolent, invested, absolute. The forest. 

James’s eyes snapped open, and he gasped, the pain leaving him, the music of the world fading into the background. The stone was clenched in his hand, so hard that he couldn’t open his fingers. 

The baby was gone from his arms. James sat up, looking around frantically. They were all gone. The baby, mom, dad, Johnathon. Grandpa was still here, a few feet off, staring up at the sky forever. 

“No,” James cried, tears falling again as he stood, unsteady. He was floating in music and used his staff to stand, to hold himself up. “No, no, no, nononono….”

They’d gone. East. He didn’t know how he knew. He could feel them. The forest told him. It didn’t matter. 

James took one step in that direction, and there was a sound like a whip cracking behind him, a tree falling over. Magic. 

_Should have waited for Tim._

“No.” James couldn’t, he couldn’t let anyone else die. He broke into a run, towards the noise, towards what had to be his Uncle Timothy. Were Jason and Titania helping him, like Johnathon? Was Julia? 

They weren’t far, and the plants moved out of James’s way as he ran, using his every breath. In the few minutes it took him to arrive, he heard two more cracks, and another tree fell over. He could feel that same power that dad had used up ahead. 

“You son of a bitch.” That was Aunt Julia. She sounded furious, voice a snarl, backed up by an angry song. “Attack me, but you try to take my _children_?” 

“Give it up,” Uncle Timothy sounded like he was pleading. “We’re all wasted here. There’s no time for this—you felt that as well as I did. Jocelyn and Kyle are leaving soon.”

“Go to hell.”

An angry sigh. They were in sight now, Aunt Julia with her back to a tree, Uncle Timothy standing in front of her. Jason and Titania were not far off, huddled together. “Fine. I fucking tried with you, Julia.” He reached out an arm, something sinuous prepared to strike. At Jason and Titania. 

“No!” Aunt Julia’s song swelled, swirled around the two of them. She didn’t see Uncle Timothy’s other hand raising, another strike prepared for her. 

“Don’t!” James raised his staff, willed his power to stop him.

A flash of light and Uncle Timothy staggered, moved forward one step, and fell down, face-first. James felt him die, and he stood there, frozen, looking at him. He hadn’t meant, he hadn’t meant that. “I didn’t…”

“James.”

“I’m sorry…” James cried, hands shaking. He dropped his staff to the ground, taking a step back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to kill him, I didn’t…”

Julia was pale, bleeding from cuts on her arms. She’d gone over to Jason and Titania, hugging them, making sure they were okay. “He was going to kill us. You did the right thing. James, where are your parents?” Her voice was shaking just as much as James’s was, but she was standing straight and not falling apart like he was. 

“They…” James pointed in the direction they’d gone, overcome again by tears. He felt so small, so weak, so useless. “They have the baby. They killed, they killed grandpa, mom killed him. And, and I think Aunt Delilah and Uncle Joey, I think they killed them too, and they, the baby…” James hugged himself, trying to warm up, rocking back and forth where he stood. 

“James, I need you with us, I know it’s hard, but…”

There was a surge of power, a painful one that struck James right in the heart, right in the soul, a dirge of lament rang through James’s mind, through the world. He knew, he _knew_ in a way he never wanted to know anything again. “No…no…no, no…”

“James!”

“The baby…” James was going to sick. The world was so heavy, so loud. He just wanted to lay down and have it all go away, he couldn’t, he couldn’t. “They killed the baby.” 

Wracked with sobs, James fell down, couldn’t move. They’d killed the baby. That was all he knew, all that he was. They’d killed the baby. 

_She’s going to have the same birthday as you. That’s a powerful sign. You’ll be able to do great things together._

But now she was dead. 

“Why?” James asked the world, asked the forest, asked the stone, asked himself. None of them had an answer, none of them knew.

“Because they’re monsters.” 

James looked up, saw his grandmother approaching from between the trees. She was hard eyed, moving faster than she ever had, holding her staff rather than using it as a cane. She was bleeding from a cut on her head, and had blood on her hands, just like James. “They must be after the stone,” grandma said coolly. “That surge of power before was their attempt to bind it to someone, probably the baby. I never thought…” She broke off, shaking her head. “We have to go after them. They can’t remove the stone from the forest.”

James shook his head, couldn’t talk. He held out his hand, managed to open his bloodied fingers. “Oh,” was all grandma said, looking down at it. “I see.”

“They tried, they tried to bind it to her,” James choked. “But it wasn’t working, she wouldn’t let them. She was going to die. So I took it. I was trying to save her. I just wanted to save her.” And he hadn’t managed to do that. James started to break down again, hunching over. 

“Grandma, what’s going on?” Titania demanded. “Why are they doing this?”

“I don’t know. But I do know that we have to stop them. James. James!” 

James started, looked up at her. “I know,” grandma said. “I understand, that you’re broken. I understand that you’re hurt. That all you want to do is cry. I understand that you don’t want to fight anymore, that you’re tired and sad. But we need your help to stop your mother and father. If they leave this forest, they’re going to hurt more people. We have to stop them from doing that.”

James looked her in the eye, saw that she was sad, broken and tired too. But she had put that behind a mask. And James heard what she said, and heard what she was really saying too. “You want to kill them.” 

“I don’t want to kill anyone. But we’re going to kill them. You don’t need to help us. But you need to show us where they are.” 

James looked at her, swallowing, shaking. “You’re bleeding.”

“We’re all bleeding, James.”

James nodded, pushing it back, trying to put on a mask like she was. It didn’t work, not as well, but he managed to nod, and point his staff in the direction they’d gone. Unbidden, trees and plants moved to the side, the land shifting to create a path for them. 

Grandma nodded, and started down that path. “Once this is done, you can cry as long as you need to.”

“Okay,” James sniffed, nodding. “Okay.”

A glimmer in the air, and Thorn landed on grandma’s shoulder. “No-go,” she said, sending a worried glance at James, and then noticing Uncle Timothy’s body with a bit of a start. “He’s being an asshole.”

Grandma sighed. “The entire forest is in danger; did you tell him that?”

“I did, and you know the damn policy. The king’s not going to interfere in your affairs.” Thorn sounded upset, and crossed her arms, looking down the path. “He’s a damned coward.”

“Fine, we’ll do it without him.” Grandma shook her head, setting off down the path. “Will you help?”

“Of course I will. Who the fuck kidnaps a baby?”

“Kills a baby,” grandma said quietly, glancing at James, who was just listening quietly, walking behind them. 

“Fuck…” Thorn whispered, closing her eyes. “How did none of us see this?”

“I’ve been asking myself that since they attacked me. My own daughter.” 

“Hey.” James jumped at the hand on his back, but it was just Jason. “We’re going to be okay.”

James shook his head. “No, we aren’t.”

“James…”

“They killed grandpa,” he said quietly, looking at his feet as he walked. “Mom just threw a knife right at him and he died. Then she said she had more important things to do. She didn’t even care. She…Johnathon is helping them. Why is he helping them?”

“Your parents probably promised him something,” Titania said. She didn’t touch James, walking just a short distance from him. Both of them had their wands out, handing limply. “Dad told me and Jason that he’d teach us all kinds of stuff, make us way powerful, give us whatever we wanted. He probably got told the same thing.”

“We might have gone with him if we hadn’t realized he’d attacked mom,” Jason said quietly, sounding angry. 

“I didn’t…” James took in a breath. “I didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident.” He’d just wanted to make Uncle Timothy stop. 

“We know,” Titania said. “You were protecting us.”

“Yeah. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

They couldn’t possibly be that fine about it, James thought. Even if he’d been trying to hurt them, Uncle Timothy had still been their father. They were wearing masks too, pretending not to be hurt. If they could do it, James could. 

“I left Kayla in her tent,” he said quietly, remembering. “She wasn’t with mom and dad.”

“She’s probably okay, then,” Aunt Julia told him. “There’s no reason for them to hurt her.”

“There was no reason for them to hurt _anyone_ ,” James insisted, closing his eyes. He wasn’t going to cry, not until they were done. 

“No,” Aunt Julia agreed, voice far away. “There wasn’t.” 

James didn’t know how long they walked, jogged, hurried, but it wasn’t long. He didn’t know how far, but it was farther than it seemed, though he wasn’t sure if they others realized that. The path he’d made was a straight line from where they’d been to where they were going, and it skipped over some of the space in between to make that straight line. He hadn’t done it on purpose. He hadn’t done anything on purpose. He was just doing it. 

They came to a wide clearing, much bigger than the last one, where mom and dad stood with Johnathon, and with Kayla, who was rubbing sleep out of her eyes. Mom and dad were drawing a spell circle from both sides. All four of them looked up.

Grandma stepped into the clearing, followed by Julia, Titania, Jason and then James. Thorn hovered just above her head. Grandma raised her staff, and pointed it at mom. Mom pointed hers back, and so did dad, and Johnathon. Aunt Julia raised her short wand, and so did Jason, and Titania her longer one. James looked at his family, both sides of it, at his parents and his brother and sister, prepared to fight his aunt and cousins and grandmother. A mutual declaration of war. They were all of them prepared to kill each other. Everyone he loved.

James raised his staff, pointed it at his mother. 

For a long moment silence reigned in the clearing, but for the ambient music of the trees’ song.

“Where’s the baby?” 

Mom jerked her head towards the treeline behind them. “In there somewhere.” It was cool, cold. Empty of any emotion at all. As if killing a baby meant nothing to her. Maybe it didn’t. 

“How could you do this, Jocelyn?” grandma asked quietly. Her voice carried resoundingly. “What possible end did you envision for this?”

“Oh, don’t feign ignorance, mother. You know there’s only one reason to do all this. Not all of us shy away from the idea of power. Real power, not sitting on the Grand Coven sniping at each other all day. Real power.” 

“At the cost of your father’s life? Your brother’s? A baby? Your son?”

“I haven’t lost a son yet,” mom corrected, smiling. “James, you’re going to come with us, aren’t you?” 

“I…” James choked on his words, numbly shook his head instead. 

“Of course you are,” mom said, holding out her free hand. “Come, we’re your family. I know you’re frightened, but everything will make sense after we’ve explained it to you.” 

“Mommy?” Kayla asked, bleary. “Isn’t James coming with us?” 

“Of course he is, dear,” mom said to her, patting her head. 

“Let her go,” James whispered, watching that hand, the hand that had killed the baby, touch his sister. She hadn’t done anything wrong. 

“I’m not going to abandon my only daughter, James. Nor my little boy. Come over here.” 

“James, don’t,” Aunt Julia warned. 

“Come on, James, hurry up,” dad said, waving him over. “You know you belong with us.” 

“Don’t be a baby, James,” Johnathon added. “Come with us. It’s going to be awesome.”

“James,” Titania whispered. “You can’t go with them.”

“Of course he can,” mom said. “We’re his family. His real family. You don’t expect him to abandon his parents, do you? Come on, James.”

James couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted…

He wanted to hike with mom, to learn from dad, for Johnathon to tease him, for Kayla to play with him. He wanted grandpa and Aunt Delilah and Uncle Joey and the baby to be alive. He wanted everyone to stop fighting. He wanted them all to go back to being family. He wanted everything to be normal. He wanted his parents to love him. 

James took a step forward, staggering. And another.

The power in the back of his mind, the forest, pulled at him, pulled him down, kept him rooted in place. Sent a surge through him that was pure worry, pure fear. From grandma and Julia and Jason and Titania. And in that surge he felt anger, impatience, hatred. From mom and dad, from Johnathon. 

James took a step back, shaking his head, not breaking eye contact with mom. “No,” he whispered, feeling his heart break as he did it.

Mom sighed. “You naïve little fool. I’m so disappointed in you, James.” 

The attacks were unexpected, immediate. Three of them, one from mom, one from dad, one from Johnathon. That same alien magic, aimed right at James like a thunderclap. He flinched under the blows, which he had no time to block, but nothing happened. The charm on his wrist was glowing with power, the protection spell Jason and Titania had woven into it. 

James stood there, shocked, blinking. They’d…they’d just all three of them tried to kill him. All that power, they’d had to have had it prepared in advance. They’d been prepared to kill him if he said no to them. 

His family. 

“Necromancy, Jocelyn?” grandma asked, glancing at James to make sure he was okay. He wasn’t okay. “I’m the one who’s disappointed.” 

“It’s just another kind of magic, mother. And one made stronger by all the people who’ve died tonight.” 

“I raised you better than this.” Grandma didn’t give mom time to answer, tapping her staff on the forest floor. The ground under mom and dad swelled, broke open, vines writhing up to grab them. 

Dad waved a hand, and they wilted. “Careful,” Thorn warned, coming down lower. “They’re standing in the middle of a big-ass spell circle. They couldn’t have had time to draw it before we got here.”

“They’ve been planning this,” Aunt Julia snarled, raising her wand and making the air ripple all around them, hitting a barrier that James could just perceive. 

This time he sensed the attacks, the weird magic—necromancy, evil magic. And James put up his staff, holding tight the stone in his hand, feeling the earth under his feet, and he put up a wall, a strong one, that blocked all of their attacks. 

One time when he and Johnathon had been bathing in the river, Johnathon had held James’s head underwater as a game, just for a few seconds. Right now, James felt like that again, like he was being held underwater, but without the panic, without the fear. He just felt like he was drowning, and that was okay. James waved his staff, created balls of light in the air. It was the easiest thing in the world to do, to draw all the power he was swimming in, to fill the sky with lights. And to send them streaking down at his family, hundreds of them, bombarding them. 

Their barrier lasted nearly a full minute before shattering under James’s power, and the balls of light kept streaking down, crashing into the ground all around them. Smaller shields popped up around them, protecting them from his attack. Protecting them from him. So they didn’t die, so he didn’t kill them.

James was going to kill them. 

The bombardment ended, and James, still drowning, raised his staff. 

So did mom, and she snapped hers downwards, slamming it against the forest floor. 

Everything around James screamed in pain. The trees, the air, the stone, the earth, the forest. Pain, shattering, cracking and tearing, rotting and dying. It overwhelmed James, and he fell to his knees, emptying his supper onto the forest floor, retching his stomach out as he was filled with corruption, with poison, with evil. 

There was a surge of alien power, a metal taste on the back of James’s tongue. He looked up, saw mom and dad, Johnathon and Kayla, magic swirling around them. None of them looked in his direction and with a snap that shook the world, they were gone.

The breaking didn’t stop when they left. It kept going, kept happening. Cracks widening, deepening, holes tearing in the forest, in the world. James cried out in pain. 

“She corrupted the wards on the forest,” Thorn was saying to grandma, sounding scared. “The flow of power, everything. It’s all tainted!”

“Damn,” grandma whispered. “Where do we even start in fixing this?”

Shaking, James reached out his staff, touched its end to the ground. He didn’t know what to do, but he needed to fix it. He needed to stop the forest screaming, stop it hurting. He squeezed the stone, pulled on it. Mom had said it would make the baby the most powerful witch in the world. And now it was James’s. He could fix this. 

The stone’s power rushed through him, through the staff and into the forest, trying to fix it even if James didn’t know how. It threatened to overwhelm him, sweep him away. James would let it, he would, but not until after he’d done this. He couldn’t let the forest die too. 

It was too much, though. The poison was too big, the stone was too vast, the power James was working with was so much bigger than him alone. He couldn’t do it, and he knew that. He’d die trying, but that was okay. That was okay, it was probably best that way. Then he wouldn’t hurt anymore. 

Just as he was about to get washed away in the river of music, James was bolstered. A second power, supporting his, keeping him in place, helping him do what he needed. A gentle touch, directing the power where it needed to go. The taint faded, the cracks started to close, and the screaming stopped. Finally, the screaming stopped. 

When it as done, James sat there, listening. The forest sounded the way it was supposed to. The rest of them were quiet. That second power was still there, just for a second, holding him. 

“Thank you,” he whispered to her, tears tracking down his cheeks. “Thank you.”

The power dissipated, permeating into the air around him, into the forest where everything eventually went. And when it was gone, James was empty. He looked up at grandma, at Aunt Julia and Jason and Titania and Thorn, and James fell over, the world going silent. 

\---

There was no way to find out where they’d gone. 

That was what James had heard Aunt Julia telling grandma when he’d woken up. They couldn’t find out where mom and dad and Johnathon and Kayla had teleported to. There was too much confusion, and too much power flying around at the scene of the fight to follow the power that they’d used to leave. 

To leave James behind.

James didn’t care. He didn’t care where they were. He wanted them to stay away, stay away from him and the forest forever. He didn’t want to find them. He didn’t want to have to kill them if they did.

They might come back for the stone someday, grandma had said quietly. They might come back for James someday. If they did, James didn’t know what he’d do. 

He’d thrown the stone into the woods; he didn’t want it. Five minutes later, he’d been sitting here, and it had been beside his hand. He’d buried it and the earth had spit it back up. He was going to throw it in the river later, but he already knew it wouldn’t matter. The forest wanted him to have the stone, and so he was going to have it. Grandma and Aunt Julia were already talking about what they were going to tell the Grand Coven. 

Jason was just crying a lot, and Titania was looking down at the ground and not talking. James understood, he understood both of them. He wanted to do both. 

A whole day he’d been asleep. In that time, they’d dug graves. Four of them, in a row behind grandma’s house. One of them was smaller than the others. 

They’d found the baby’s body in the woods. And they’d left Timothy’s where it had fallen. Four graves. 

It didn’t take very long to fill in a grave. They’d done that this morning, come out here and laid the bodies to rest and covered them in earth. James had watched as grandpa and Aunt Delilah and Uncle Joey and the baby had disappeared under the dirt. He’d helped them disappear under the dirt. 

It was what happened when someone died. They got returned to the earth. 

The forest had been singing a soft, sad song throughout the quiet funeral. James wished it wouldn’t. 

They’d tried to get him to go inside, to eat something, to put on clean clothes. James didn’t want to. He wanted to stay out here, by himself. With the bodies. Aunt Julia had told him he could stay out here for a little while, as long as he came in later. James had agreed to make her go away.

Now he was just sitting here, watching the graves, blocking out the forest’s music.

A buzz, and Thorn was sitting on the grass beside him. “You want to talk about it, kid?”

“No.” James didn’t want to talk. He wanted to be by himself.

“Okay,” Thorn patted James’s hand. “Listen.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Just listen. It wasn’t your fault. Nothing that happened was your fault. I know it doesn’t make it better or easier and it shouldn’t, because nothing’s going to make it better or easier right now. But I want to make sure that someone tells you that it wasn’t your fault, you hear me?”

“They’re my parents,” James whispered. “And I didn’t know.” He hadn’t known that they were monsters. _You naïve little fool_.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Thorn repeated. “Nobody knew.”

“I saw them every day for my whole life.” 

“That’s…”

“I should have known.” 

Thorn buzzed angrily, fluttering up in front of James’s face. “It _wasn’t your fault_ , do you hear me?”

James did hear her. She was wrong. He looked up, looked at her. Nodded. “Okay,” he said, to make her go away. 

“Say it,” Thorn ordered. She looked pale and tired like the rest of them. 

“It wasn’t my fault,” James lied. 

“Okay.” Thorn let out a breath. “You going to stay out here for a while?”

James nodded. “I think so.”

“Just don’t sit here all day, okay?”

“I won’t.” 

“You want some company?”

James shook his head. 

“Okay,” Thorn said again. “Call me if you change your mind about talking.”

“Thank you, Thorn.” She was trying to help. James didn’t want her to help. 

“Remember what I said, kid,” she said, and Thorn flew away, leaving James alone.

Not for long, though. Grandma came out not much later, with a blanket that she put around James’s shoulders. She put a plate of cookies down beside James. “I’m not hungry.” How was James supposed to eat when everyone was dead?

“I know, neither am I.” 

“I tried to help him,” James said, looking at grandpa’s grave. His cane was buried with him, and James could still hear it singing faintly. He wondered how long it would take to stop. “I tried, but I couldn’t help him. I’m sorry.”

“I shouldn’t have let him go out,” grandma said with a sigh. “I underestimated your parents.”

James nodded. “Do you think they were monsters the whole time?”

“I don’t know,” grandma said. She shook her head. “I don’t know. And we won’t know until we find them.”

“I don’t want to find them.”

“But we have to.”

“So we can kill them.”

“Yes.”

James nodded. “Okay. Do you want to sit here with me?”

Grandma was quiet for a second as she looked at the graves. “Maybe later. I can’t right now. I can’t bring myself to sit at his grave yet.”

“I understand,” James said. Everyone was sad. James was just empty. 

“I’ll be in the house if you need anything. Try to eat at least a few cookies.”

“I’ll try,” James lied.

Grandma patted James on the head, and went inside. 

Jason and Titania had gone into the woods. They were going to bury Timothy, James figured, but they didn’t want to tell Aunt Julia or grandma. Even if he’d been a monster, he’d still been their father. James hadn’t offered to go with them. He knew they didn’t want him to. 

He sat there, watching the graves in silence for a good long time. James wasn’t sure why. They were just graves, they just had bodies in them. Everything that had made them people was gone. 

“You helped me, didn’t you?” James asked, voice hoarse and dry. “It was you, at the end. You helped me even though I couldn’t help you. You…” His breath caught, and he shook his head. 

Moving for the first time in hours, James crawled forward, in between Aunt Delilah and Uncle Joey, to the baby’s grave in between them. And he put his hands on the fresh dirt, running some magic into it. 

Flowers bloomed over the grave, covering it up. Then they spread, growing over all of them, without James intending it, until all four graves were blooming with life. 

James lifted his hands, sat back, watching the flowers blow in the wind, listening to them sing. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, tears finally falling down his face. “I’m sorry.”

Now that the tears had started, James found he couldn’t stop them, and he sat there among the dead, in the flowers, grieving. 

The world was full of music, and James wished he couldn’t hear it.


End file.
